Copyrighting/Trademarking Your Work

Copyrighting/Trademarking Your Work

You can protect your work and yourself by copyrighting/trademarking your work yourself.   This protects you from anyone stealing your words, designs, concepts, ideas, etc.  It also provides you with a bargaining tool when negotiating Contracts, Commissions, Royalty Percentages, etc.

What is the difference between a copyright and a trademark?  A copyright protects authors of "original works of authorship" including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works both published and unpublished.   Trademarks and Service-marks protect a unique design, picture, emblem, or logo that identifies the manufacturer as the product's source or the source of the service.   A trademark can also be given for a title, slogan, or other shirt word phrase.

One: Evaluate Your Work
Before sending your work to the U.S. Copyright Office or the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, be sure that it is complete and exactly how you want your finished product to look.   If you are a writer, any type of writer, have an objective person[no friends, family members, teachers,mentors, etc ] proofread your work, and look at their feedback objectively.   You want to copyright the highest quality product, since incomplete, poor quality work doesn't leave you with a leg to stand on whether it's copyrighted or not.  If you produce beats, have an objective person listen to the final product for hums, whistles, unplanned pauses, etc., and listen to their feedback objectively.   You want your work to sound as crisp and as clean as possible as this provides you a leg to stand on when suing for copyright infringement.

Two: Organize Your Work
If you are a writer in any genre, you want to package your work in the format in which you wish to publish it in.  If you are a producer of beats, singer, rapper, or poet, record your work in the format in which you wish to sell it in.  This prevents you from having yo copyright your work twice.

Three: Send for Copyright/ Trademark Certificate
You can get all you need to know about copyrighting at www.copyright.gov.  You can fill out the correct form(s) online or print them and mail them in with your work.  The fee for Basic Registration is $30, Group Registrations will run a minimum of $45, and the filing of a correction or amplification to a completed registration carries a fee of $100.  That is why it is so important to make sure your work is in its finished state before submitting your registration.

You can get all you need to know about trademarking at www.uspto.gov.  The electronic filing fee for the initial trademark/service mark application is $325 per class of goods or services if filed through the TEAS form.  Or, for a TEAS Plus form, the fee is $275, and full payment of all classes is required at the time of filing.  I.E. An application may only have one mark, but may cover multiple classes; E.G. A TEAS application with two classes would be for both computer software in Class 9 and T-shirts in Class 25, making the filing fee $650.  You do not have to have already used your mark before filing an application.  However, if the mark has not already been used in interstate commerce at the time of filing, but instead the application is based on an "intent-to-use" the mark in interstate commerce in the future, and additional fee of $100 per class will be required when the "Allegation of Use" form is submitted (whereas a "use-based" application does not require this additional fee).  Also, the filing fee is a processing fee for the application.  This fee is not returned even if ultimately the USPTO does not issue a registration.  You should take all necessary steps to ensure the mark is registrable before filing the application.

NOTE:  All fees listed above will researched in 2005, and may have changed between then and the time you read this blog